Phusion Passenger version 2.2.9 has been released. This release increases compatibility with Rack applications, communication with nginx, better support for Rails 3, and much more. If you're running Passenger, you should look into upgrading.

Christoph Heindl released RCapture last week which provides you with convenient Ruby method hooks. These hooks allow you to not only intercept calls and return values, but also manipulate inputs, cancel out calls, and more. It's almost like the checkmate of monkey patching.

Rails 3 is coming, whether you're ready or not. And really, wouldn't you rather be ready for it? So, to this end, the RailsBridge Rails 3 BugMash is here! This weekend, January 16th and 17th, fix an issue, report a bug, write a blog post, create a screencast, or just build a Rails 3 application and document how it went for you. Everything helps the cause... please take an hour or two this weekend to contribute to your favorite web framework while getting your feet wet.

Following last weeks Thoughtbot Ruby Survey, New Relic has released their State of the Stack. Using the data they collect when you run RPM, we get a deep insight into the current shape of the ecosystem. For example, the most popular configuration out there is currently Ruby 1.8.6 running Rails 2.3.4. Also, jRails, delayed_job, thinking-sphinx, and hoptoad are highly popular add-ons to many applications.

Ever notice that Net::HTTP is a library which is just about impossible to memorize? Even when you use it everyday, simple tasks still require rdoc lookups and Google searches. So, to help you ease the pain, August Lilleass recently put together a git repository of Net::HTTP examples which provide you with a quick reference the next time you run into these issues.

Ben Lavender has released Quantity.rb, a library which provides simple unit and quantity math and conversions. With it, you can do something like "12.meters * 1.kilogram / 2.seconds**2" and actually get back something useful.

Previous Episodes

The results of the 2009 Ruby Survey are in, the author of Thinking Sphinx provides a recap, and we Wackamole with MongoDB. Also, MailStyle, NetRecorder, and Ruby regular expressions make it into this episode of Ruby5.

The Ruby Gems Bundler, has_scope, Responders, and LipsiADMIN are covered on this episode of Ruby5. Also, we talk about articles covering PDF generation in the cloud, Twitter Streaming with Web Sockets, and the anniversary of the Rails and Merb merge.